ritual 

from now on i'm eating only
strawberry seeds. 
as we speak
there are diamond cutters
hunched over gems
making them more valuable.
their blades made of diamonds.
like them, i wear a magnifying glass
& i peer at my subject.
all dissections have nothing to do
with the specimen & everything
to do with what the artist
is looking to find.
i pluck seed after seed 
with tweezers & pour them
into the palm of my hand.
when i get 100 i pour them
into my mouth. there will always be
more diets to be exercised
but trust me this is not
a diet. this is a ritual.
a seed is a future. 
dull as beetle shells.
when eating only when object
you can really focus 
on the taste. in eighth grade
there were a few days i only ate
grapes & now i know everything
about their skin.
in my humming bird heart
i saw the history of grapes--
vines tangled with vines
& their pale white seeds.
diamonds cutting themselves.
strawberries, one by one 
on a plate to be plucked.
before we eat poultry 
we remove all plumage 
& the animal stands there
knowing what will happen next.
prickled pale flesh.
wings bare. a diamond
has zero calories because
it cannot be set on fire
or at least this is what
a Google search tells me.
anyway, i will stick 
to my strawberry seeds
& my processes. a process
for me is a kind of
survival. when i say process
i guess i mean ritual.
when i say ritual 
you could call it an obsession.
i fill rooms with strawberry seeds
in preparation for 
the end of season when 
no strawberries grow 
& there is only darkness.
no, i don't eat grapes
anymore they are too sweet
& diamonds, i have never had one.
the method is 
as important as 
the result. i did not want
to buy the seeds
i wanted to feel the moment
of resistance
before i pulled them
from the surface
of the fruit.

mortal poem 

we buy halloween costumes
even though it's almost august 
& there are few places to haunt.
i am a reaper & you are a vampire.
plastic sithe, plastic teeth.
both in black robes, i tell you
i want to show you a place.
it's night & neither of us
have a flashlight. all around
the ghosts are starting to slip out
of the dirt. ghost of a dead oak tree.
ghost of a coal miner. ghost of 
a speckled song bird. we blend right in
with our sauntering. you ask me
what it means 
to be dead & if somehow
we died without noticing.
i tell you i'm not sure. we both
have always sought out deceased company.
to test our skin we throw
rocks at each other. the rocks 
leave wide purpling bruises 
on our thighs & our chests.
we decide this means we aren't dead.
in myself, i think life is
a catrography of bruises. 
one rock was whitish & smooth.
i run to find it & discover
it is a deer skull. we hunch 
around the bone & the ghosts
of flowers bloom all around. 
i want to wear the skull
& you say you want to find 
a place to rest. 
we find coffins deep 
in the brush left 
by some real ghoul on his way
to the lake or maybe
collecting those 
black round berries.
pull the lids over our faces
& you knock on the side 
of your box so i knock 
on the side of mine. 
i say we could
float down the river in these.
i cross my arms over my chest.
my polyester costume smells 
like rubber dog toys & grass.
closing my eyes 
i imagine the sun rising 
on the forest. as i imagine it
so it happens & i pry the lid off
only to find you were never there.
your coffin, gone. the trees 
all looking up towards the sky.
the trickling of deer hooves
as an animal rushes  
out of sight. i take 
the long walk home
in my hot costume. i lay
the plastic sithe down
by the side of the trail.

domestic disemboident 

in the town made of hands 
even a door knob 
is a warm fist--even a staircase 
could grab you.
my bed, a nest of palms, holds me.
all the fingernails 
with their opalescent shine.
gleam of a nightlight glowing hand.
the walls of my house 
have wrinkled knuckles
& the bathtub prunes
from a recent shower. 
i am not alone at all except
entirely alone. not a single 
mouth in sight. i walk out
onto the sidewalk: back of hands 
& i ask the wrists 
where the bodies live. 
elsewhere? healthy bodies
running across trails 
of solid earth & gravel.
i want to have a healthy body
no longer made of flies.
sometimes my heart escapes
& eats a handful of blueberries.
sometimes i try to escape
& i cry & cry hoping
the hands will wave & say
"hello you are not alone
in your body." but i am
here i am with all my joint
& all my fears. who will
save my from my lungs?
who will pour nectar down my throat.
i breathe in a mouthful
of july & i hold my breath,
counting to ten. i am scared
of dying with only the hands
to watch me. would they take my body
& teach me how to be
only a hand? would another boy
end up in this town
with all his sadness & all his pacing?
who is less trapped than who?
where will you take me?
a hand from the wall
brushes my cheek 
with the cool back
of the hand. i feel the knuckles
& the bones 
& the three little hairs.

adoration

this sunday the sun will rise
like a eucharist wafer,
white & papery behind a hum 
of clouds. i will walk out
inside the town, incense trailing
from my mouth & my nose
& i will think of the bodies
of gods & how desperately
we try to know them. 
the red hot smoldering
at the pit of my self
was lit by a wayward match.
i used to burn myself 
like patchouli or frankincense 
& the smoldering skin
became scabs & the scabs became
the pot holes i drove my car across
through the city 
that one night
when we should have taken the train
but instead got lost over & over.
i miss the menagerie 
of light. i didn't see one firefly 
this whole year-- but this poem
is not about my own saddnesses
this poem is about god
& how i collect wildflowers 
in an attempt to know 
that divine. pink, white, 
& indigo. lay them on the nightstand
to curl up & thin. i don't know
if i have ever prayed--
what i do remember is sitting
in a quiet too-large church
as we all kneeled infront of 
a single eucharist wafer. god is narrow
as a withered mountain flower.
i'd run out of things to say to him
& start listing everything 
i worried about: how will i get
my father to show he loves me, how will
i get the attic unlocked, how will i help
my grandmother's ghost, who is going to
help my mom boil the water
for the pot of pasta. no answer
just a vast wavering. the hard wood
of the pew becoming the forest rising 
around my little home. i could climb a tree
& make wafers of my body up there.
i don't own any gold 
or any silver to hold
my body.

aubade 

the mornning-chatter birds
discuss what they think a stop sign means
while a stray cat rings a service bell
stuck to the torso of a tree.
how can i help you how can
i help you. i put a finger 
to the mouth of a turtle
& he bites off my digit
to the knuckle. who needs
a window when we have rain?
i spend my morning plugging 
all the holes in my body. 
a bandaide here-- a patch of glue
& some duct tape. even the moon
leaks fluid sometimes
& has to be mended. but yes
it is everyone's job
to make planteary fixes
here i am with just my hands
& my skin & the company
of the violin songs 
that make the sun blink open.
the night's carapice
crunches under a foot. 
i shake off the hooves of sleep.
what i want is a 
time machine of leaves
& vines to ask me 
what decade i'd like
to sleep in--i would say 
one without any boys at all. 
i want to see
if my gender holds up to scarcity.
a customer service man
knocks at the door
& i pretend to not be home.
i don't want to complain to him.
he works so so hard.
plus his uniform is sexy. he looks like
someone's dad.
what do you do
when you have so much to be happy for
but cannot find
a single grain 
to save yourself?
i tell my friends i'm doing
pretty good pretty 
good & what i mean is 
i am still alive in some corner
of my soup bowl. 
a spoonful of daylight
is enough for me.
leave a message
after the bird throats
& i will open the door one day
& we will talk in poems &
i will not make you sad
at all. 

salt

i throw salt over my shoulder
wherever i go. 
handful. coarse granules
in my palm. pockets full
of salt. this was the salt
you gave me. salt born 
from a body. we jogged in place. 
shook like stray branches.
i feel all the salt flecks
glimmering across my skin
like constellations. don't you want
to reverse all your luck?
wake up with quarters over you eyes?
don't you want to feel safe
in the heavy leadening forest? 
leaves bolder fall to the brush. 
a metal is taking over
all pulsing. here, look at 
my hand as it trembles.
i am just trying to hold 
a steady bone. 
it is amazing what salt can do 
to a plant's skin.
i watch a tree sweat itself 
to death. what about humans then?
i am seeking my first purification. 
i need a clean that traels
all the way underneath 
my tongue. soon, salt 
will fall from every single 
single opening 
in every single sky 
& we will open out hands
like jars. preservation 
is different than remembering.
we carved our faces
in a bowl of stone.
i miss every single moment we had
before the camera was invented.
sitting for my portrait,
the salt pours out
& buries me & only me

BMI

at the doctor's 
i lie about my weight.
i say i am made of approximately 
83 mourning doves 
or a teaspoon of goldfish or, 
on a good, day, i am one pelican.
BMI stands for body mass index.
an exam table
can be an altar 
if your cloth is wax.
a shuffling of fingers.
at night they way 
planets & tell the moon
she eats too many buckets
of sugar. i use
the smallest spoons i can find 
as reminders of 
the portions of fruit flies.
here is your waist 
& here is your fat around
the waist. i am wasting,
no away, but upward. 
so so tall & thin. so so 
neon drinking. a syringe 
full of flours in my forearm.
a doctor is measuring 
how much my soul weights.
this is all in preparation
for the final scales 
where a phantom dog
will way my heart
& determine 
if the summerland is ready
for another pair of feet.
a white room is always 
a kind of portrait.
notes buzz on a notepad.
what does the doctor
record? does he take 
the notes human & unspool them
for his own pleasure?
yes. several hundred hummingbirds 
could fit inside me.
yes, my bones are dense.
you could call me
a bolder of flesh. roll me
down a carpeted staircase.
teach my your diet physics 
& i will teach you mine.
a body is a dangerously
malleable starting place.
watch, i will show you 
how i move towards 
willow & sapling. doctor
with his teeth made of wood.
he shakes his head.
tells me i am
the heaviest possible object.
six or seven 
dead stars worth.
here i am.

july

trust nothing the forget-me-nots
tell you about mourning.
it was humid & i floated through town
like an orphaned button. i was trying
to overlook my loneliness
by collecting the smoothest stones
i could find. an object
is the only solution to 
the real undoing. i found
whitish stones & grave-stones 
& a church spire piercing cloud.
i plucked a white fringed flower
from a crack in the sidewalk
& cradled the plant home, hoping
to re-plant there. 
weak, the plant fainted 
& would not wake up. this morning
i could not wake up so i slept
another whole day & 
no one noticed. the forget-me-nots 
only bloom between a tangle
of ivys & brush. little blue faces
between knives of green.
i have never plucked one
despite how much i want to.
they are very kind flowers 
& they wave to me each day 
& say, "hello dear robin!"
i waive back & say hello 
but i never know what else to say.
i want to say, "flowers, forgive me
but i am so forsaken i write
the day of the week on a notecard
to remind myself." no, the flowers
don't want to hear something like that
so i write the words on a dinner plate,
cover it with salad & swallow. 
a fork can be used 
as a dowsing rod when i am looking
to feel the water under my feet.
i sat on the porch at night
& i saw not a single firefly.
do they simple not come here?
i have been waiting for 
something beautiful. the flowers
waive again & close their feathered eyes
for the night. my face is blue
with forgetting.

the kutztown park water fountain 

was fed by clouds. 
white, grey, dark
clouds all of them coming to crouch 
in a single pipe. 
their spilling. the clouds above
asking each other "do you fear
becoming water?" 
children in a line
along the cement walkway.
all of us had mouths
with lips & tongues. the sun
drank us. dirt nestled
under our fingernails.
not far away the sandbox
made us architects.
yes, we were expert 
twig harvestors 
& cicada shell collectors. 
put our mouths 
too close to the opening 
where clear water 
breached. cool & round tasting.
our soft elbows. 
green rustling all around &
the whine of a swingset being swung. 
the life of a cloud 
inside our mouths. 
all of us standing above
& looking down on the playground
from our cloud.
a cloud voice telling us children
"be careful or 
you might evaportate 
& only see everything
from above." a bird 
cutting through a cloud.
thunderstorm would come
that night & i, a children,
would walk out & open my mouth
to catch rain drops.
where does 
the waterfountain wait?
the cloud in my veins 
helped me float
up to the top bunk
of my bed. i looked towards
the ceiling. blank.
playground boned. a bruise
on my shoulder. mulch fleck
in hair. the cloud
slowly departing,
leaving out my ears
& my mouth & my nose.
nightlight blinking 
to dark.

today i am 24

& in this life i am the caretaker
of a cementery. the fence is rought iron
& the graves hover just above the earth
like humming birds. my shovel
is as heavy as it needs to be
& i stalk a path, thinking of last year
when i had a different life 
& a cake rose from parking lot dirt
& we ate with our hands. 
frosting under fingernails 
& you playing music from 
your phone speaker. tinny & small 
a mouth perched in our ears.
my bones were less elastic. my jaw
was screwed on right. i woke up
before the sun. my insurance agent
visits me in the graveyard
to wish me a happy birthday 
& to remind me of the statistical chances
of death. i tell him those things
don't happen to me. he hands me a briefcase.
i wait till he leaves to open it
& confetti spews in my face.
next year, i make a promise to myself
to let no one know my birthday.
at the far end of the graveyard
i go to a masoleum to lay down.
my dreams involve: an award ceremony,
a school shooter, & a kiss with 
a high school teacher. none of it asked for.
tomorrow will be just another day
& i will try hard to think less
about my body. a bell is ringing
louder & louder. the acolyte in me
craves a chalice or a golden place
to eat a morning off of. 
where are my friends? i ask 
the graveyard. the tombstones
roll over like puppy dogs.
a ghost brushes past my shoulder
& i whittle the sun
with a butter knife
until it reveals its disguise
& just becomes the moon.